


Uncertainty

by Erradianwhocantread



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Second Kinslaying | Sack of Doriath, dead fingon, description of past angband torture, pure angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 12:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11532276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erradianwhocantread/pseuds/Erradianwhocantread
Summary: Maedhros has to decide what to do about the Silmaril at Menegroth in the aftermath of the Nirnaeth.Or: How Morgoth planted the seeds of the second kinslaying, and Fingon inadvertently gave them miracle-grow.





	Uncertainty

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to fidelishaereticus.tumblr.com for working out the headcanon that became this with me!

There was a Silmaril at Doriath. 

Celegorm and Curufin, of course, wanted to strike at once. Maglor was still making excellent cases both for an offensive and for mercy. Maedhros had long since ceased to listen to his brothers’ counsel. He stared at the cold metal where his hand had been, willing himself to remember. To forget should not have been possible, but the problem had never been a  _ lack  _ of memory. There was much, so much, that he remembered from his time in Angband that was false, so many times he’d been made to witness the torture, execution, or corruption of his brothers, his father, his friends, his kin, Fingon… and all of it had been the twisted games Morgoth’s lieutenant had played with his mind. Yet he had witnessed the illusions. The fabrications were no more his own doing than any of the scars he carried from his time there. If only he still had the scar… 

 

Remembering was never the problem. 

 

His mouth was full of blood from the blow he’d been dealt for trying to kill one of his fellow prisoners to end their suffering. For his troubles, Morgoth had speeded the corruption, transforming the poor soul while he was forced to watch into an orc all the more hideous and misshapen for the haste. He spat blood and bits of tooth at Morgoth after he’d released the new orc and come within spitting distance, thinking, hoping to die like his grandfather in noble defiance. Morgoth only laughed at him. He wanted so badly to die, to see his brother and father and grandparents. So he taunted him. “Corrupt and kill as many of us as you will, thief, it shall not avail you! You shall never have that which you desire! Neither the power to create, nor the enjoyment of that which you have pilfered! Never shall you touch them without being burned! And when my brothers and I trammel you in the dust and pluck the holy Silmarils from your crown, you will remember my curse!” His voice sounded fey to his own ears, like his father’s before the end.

 

Silence descended on the cavern, leaving his defiance to ring thin and hollow. The Morgoth snatched him by the right wrist, holding him with no effort at all between a withered thumb and forefinger, carefully removing his great crown from his head with his other hand. “Let us see, shall we,” he purred, voice thick with a dangerous amusement, “how Varda’s blessing will feel about a kinslayer.” Impossibly swiftly, Morgoth pressed one of the Silmarils to his palm… the pain had been like nothing he had been dealt before. It seemed to cut into his very soul. He’d screamed. How could this happen? How could… it should not… he wasn’t…  _ no evil thing can touch them _ … but he wasn’t… he  _ wasn’t _ … Morgoth grabbed the thought from his mind before he’d completed it. “It is no trick, I assure you. Even I must acknowledge that I cannot overrule what Varda has done. They have judged you and found you wanting.” He returned the crown to his head and held out his own hand for comparison. “Now we match.” The brightness in his voice at that prospect hurt almost more than the burn. “I’d half a mind to do the other, make it a full set. But that’s hardly necessary now that the point has been made.” He dropped Maedhros unceremoniously to the floor, where he curled himself, shaking, screaming, around his ruined hand. “We are not so very different after all, you and I.”

 

A voice cut through the memory… Caranthir? Maedhros blinked himself back to the present in time to hear what was doubtlessly at least the third call of “Brother!” He looked up as an invitation for Caranthir to continue “What would you? Do we attack, or do we continue to pander?” The last word was sneered in Maglor’s direction, though it would have been just as fair to accuse Maedhros.

 

“I will consider,” Maedhros said, already halfway from the chamber. “Alone.”

 

Safe in his own room with the door latched, Maedhros removed the prosthetic. He tensed the muscles that had once clenched and unclenched fingers, trying to trigger that pain. If he could feel it, it must have happened. Of course it happened, he remembered it happening. But he remembered watching Fingon flayed alive, and that certainly had not happened. He remembered Morgoth holding a Silmaril to his palm, and his flesh searing at its touch… Grant that had happened, could he be sure, could he be  _ truly  _ sure that it was his touch which had caused it to burn? Morgoth was, after all, holding them, most evil of all creatures, and perhaps they had burned so in a futile attempt to free themselves from him, perhaps Maedhros’s hand had been an unfortunate casualty to the rage of the Silmarils at being imprisoned by Morgoth… he’d managed to stir up the ghost of pain, but it wasn’t enough, not for certainty. If he only had the scar he could compare it to the burns he’d received from Balrogs and brands, see the mark of it, know if it was truly, truly from a Silmaril, if only he had his hand…

 

If only Fingon hadn’t taken his hand.

 

He had to laugh at that. The double meaning fit too well. 

 

If Fingon had never taken his hand, then Fingon would have known exactly why he should never, never, never have taken his hand! Fingon would have chided him severely for such a joke, he’d hated it whenever Maedhros had tried to convince him he was unworthy, even more when he’d make jokes about his sufferings… well he wasn’t here to chide now. The gulf of his absence threatened to open up at that, but something deadened it, as it had since he’d come back to himself after the Nirnaeth. He cursed his beloved, not for the first time, for his blindness, for not seeing what it was he’d joined himself to, and for depriving them both of the evidence. He’d been too gone with madness, deprivation, and despair to explain the significance of the appendage, why it must be kept, if not on him, then brought back with them. He’d pictured it before of course, what would have happened if Fingon had seen, if he’d been able to tell him, how he would have recoiled, that awful look of realization on his beautiful face, the curses he would have given him, how he would have left, left him there, left him to his deserved fate, killed him maybe, if he was feeling merciful… Afterwards he’d been too much of a coward to tell him. In his own defense, it had taken him some time to remember it at all. His memories of that time had been fragmented, disjointed, confused, for so long… and then so many of them hadn’t happened at all, had been mere trickery in an attempt to break him, why should this not be the same? He had no reason to believe it was not, no proof… but perhaps he once had had. And Fingon, dear, sweet, brave Fingon, Fingon who insisted on seeing him not as he was but as he ought to be, bright and shining Fingon had cut off the one thing that would have proved, beyond shadow of all doubt, that his beloved was unworthy of his love, was a monster, belonged on that mountain. He had told Fingon of many of the torments, real and illusions, more than he’d told anyone else, let him pick his own way through so much of it, but never that one. Never that one. Coward that he was, he could have born Fingon knowing the truth of him no better than he now bore his death. And he’d known that even if he’d told him, even once the memories had mostly sorted themselves, even if he’d let him walk in it, he would not have believed. He would have insisted it was some trick, come up with a million reasons not to admit the true nature of what he’d given his heart to… and perhaps he would have been right. For all Morgoth’s declaration, why could it not have been a trick? He’d tricked their entire people into thinking Orome would devour them, why could he not trick Maedhros, who was hardly the wisest among the Eldar, into this? And was it not in his interest to do so, to hasten his surrender? And once he’d been chained to the mountain he hadn’t been able to feel his hand at all, so was it not possible that the incident had simply been planted in his memory, another one of Sauron’s vicious games?

 

There was, of course, one way to determine, once and for all, if the Silmaril had, indeed, rejected him. If Fingon should have repulsed him, left him up there to die, been sensible and stayed in Aman and  _ lived _ . The experiment could now be repeated. His brothers were clamoring for it to be. He could put an end to this detestable wondering, and now, of course, he had nothing to lose by the knowledge. Fingon was no longer here to disappoint. Fingon was resting safely in the Halls, reunited with his father and brother and grandfather… instinctively, defiantly, foolishly, some part of him reached out for Fingon, only to be met with a sickening, rotted feeling… they were severed. The knowledge could not hurt Fingon now. He had to know. Regardless of the Oath, he had to know. He could fight its pull, had long fought its pull, but not so his curiosity. 

 

Maedhros flung open the door to the council chamber to find his brothers still bickering. They quieted when he entered. “Prepare your warriors. We set out for Doriath in the morning.” He let the door slam shut behind him as he took the stairs up to the battlement. Yes, tomorrow, for good or ill, he would know how alike to pure evil he truly was.

 

Maglor had followed him. Of course Maglor had followed him. Of course Maglor was protesting this course of action wildly. Maedhros had half a mind to address him by Kana when he finally responded, just so the irritation might be equally distributed, but he didn’t really fancy the Nelyas it would elicit. Of course Maglor was not to be deterred by terse answers that would have shut anyone else up. Of course Maglor saw nothing unwise about backing him into a corner and shouting in his face. Anyone with half an ounce of self-preservation would never have dared, but Maglor, damn him, was only half as talented at music as he was at purposely driving his brothers mad. And of course,  _ of course  _ Maglor eventually had a desperate, muted “ _ I have to know!”  _ slipping through his teeth. The passion play of confusion to horror and back to pretended confusion on Maglor’s face was nearly worth having had to say it. “Don’t play the fool.” he growled. “You know exactly what I’m referring to, and if you make me explain it again brother, so help me…”

 

This was not a topic Maglor wished to know of at all, much less discuss. Maedhros almost pitied him for it. He’d told him on their journey east, after all their brothers had retired, after they’d both consumed far, far too much wine. He needed to tell someone all of it, and it couldn’t be Fingon. So it had to be Maglor. Of course Maglor pretended he’d forgotten, that he’d been too drunk to have heard properly, that he had retired early that night and Maedhros had only dreamed telling him. Anything to avoid the truth and its implications for his meticulously curated image of himself. What must if be like, Maedhros wondered not for the first time, to be so thoroughly convinced of your own goodness? Once Maglor had collected himself, he started down the old predictable path. “It was a trick brother. It had to be. What could you have done to be rejected by it? It makes no sense, unless it was a trick! Some game of Sauron’s to break your spirit, or else a dream you had chained to that mountain! Nothing more!”

 

“Maglor--”

 

“Maedhros, I tell you it  _ did not happen! _ Do you remember how you were when you first came back to us? Do you? You thought father was alive, you didn’t recognize us half the time, even Fingon had to admit your mind had fractured. The burning was a dream your fevered brain created to explain the phantom pains in your lost hand. So no, Maedhros, we do  _ not  _ have to invade Doriath just so you can  _ know  _ something  _ that never happened! _ ”

 

“That’s just the problem, Maglor, I don’t know if it did! Perhaps you are right and it was fever, or deprivation, or Sauron’s trickery. Perhaps it was not! I cannot live any longer with this perhaps!”

 

Maglor tossed his head in a display of long-suffering irritation. “I see what this is really about.” Maedhros wanted to choke him. If he’d had two hands he might have. “This is about Fingon.” If he’d had two hands, Maedhros would cheerfully have strangled him and flung his corpse down the stairs. “You feel responsible. Of course you do, you’re grieving! You feel unworthy because you couldn’t protect him, and you’re dragging this up to justify it. Well you didn’t kill him, and nothing you could have done would have saved him! Maedhros, you are not evil! How could you be? You held our people together for over five centuries! You kept the Enemy from their doors! You even managed to keep Celegorm and Curufin from doing too much harm! Maedhros, it doesn’t make any sense, so accept that it  _ did not happen  _ and turn from this folly before it’s too late!”

 

All Maedhros could manage was a “ _ But what if it did?”  _ which sounded desperate and mad even to him. “What if it did?”

 

“Maedhros--”

 

“And if it didn’t, then how can I trust aught from my own memory? What else did I dream up, if I could dream up that?”

 

“ _ Maedhros--” _

 

“...It felt so real. I have to know.”

 

“Do not damn us all for your curiosity. Please.”

 

Maedhros laughed. How could he not at this false sanctimoniousness? “Oh, dear brother, we damned ourselves long ago.” He pushed past his brother and continued up to the battlement. This time Maglor did not follow.


End file.
